Eli5:Why do countries in Asia have such high populations and high population densities?
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Historically, the Fertile Crescent was in this area. This was the best agricultural land, possibly in the world. So better farming meant more population could specialize and therefore grow a civilization with specialized workers. So these areas also became the wealthiest.
A decent starting point for reading about this is guns, germs, steel by Jared diamond (excellent archeology, terrible understanding politics). The difference between how many animals could be tamed and domesticated, how easily certain crops could spread, and so on is interesting. Where that falls down is in the colonial period. Agriculture is no longer as important.
Before colonization, the Indian subcontinent was about as wealthy as the whole of Europe (in terms of gdp). China was as well. These areas have historically been far more important in total share of wealth and population. Partly cos of the farming land and what was available during this time. ‘Civilization’ spread from Africa to Asia to Europe and so on. So they’ve had a heady stay, historically, on the rest of the world.
In Europe, or European colonies (inc usa and Canada) we don’t tend to hear these histories. Everything’s focused on the Roman Empire or the Greeks. They were small by comparison tho.
In terms of population, now into the modern era, eli5 would be there are far more slums. The particular kinds of development and government there have incentivized certain kinds of development and dependence especially, so that poor workers live mostly in an informal economy, often as family drivers and maids and other domestic servants. In the country I live in, these workers were only relatively recently given a minimum wage and it’s now half the minimum wage of other workers. And of course is below poverty wages.
So when you have these types of development, especially a large mass dependent upon a rich elite, you have higher densities of population. Which is why the Philippines and India have the highest population densities in their cities.
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